MOM TRIED TO CONCEAL 3 CHILDREN STATE CHARGES HER WITH DEFYING COURT

Police say Carol Montgomery changed the names of her three children and got them new Social Security numbers -- anything to make them invisible to authorities.

If she had not missed one crucial step, a Palm Beach County sheriff's detective said, the children would never have seen their father again.

But until Montgomery, 38, goes to trial on felony charges of removing her children from the state against a court order, the details of her capture may never be known.

"I just don't want to put out a checklist of what we do," Detective Mark Evans said. "It would make my job harder and the job of hundreds of other detectives harder."

Montgomery recently turned down the second plea bargain offered in the case. Prosecutor Betty Resch said she is tired of waiting. On Jan. 16, lawyers in the case are scheduled to gather to set a trial date.

A father in a Broward County case was acquitted last month of similar charges. A jury decided that Allan Hueton was trying to protect his daughter, now 2 1/2, from abuse by the mother.

In Montgomery's case, the first in Palm Beach County in at least two years, she made similar claims when she took the children in August 1986. But prosecutors and police say there was no evidence to suggest the father, David Bray, was abusing his three children.

"She had gone the whole nine yards" to cover her trail, Evans said. He tracked Montgomery from March 9, 1988, until police found her and the children in Virginia five months later.

"It's really amazing we found her at all," Ann Perry, Bray's lawyer, said.

The children will remain in the custody of Virginia authorities until the case is resolved.

Montgomery claimed in earlier court hearings that she took the children -- ages 16, 13 and 7 -- to spare them from abuse by their father. She said her ex-husband had threatened her and sexually abused all three children in the past.

Before asking the Sheriff's Office to find his children, Bray had worked with two private investigators and the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, a national clearinghouse for information about missing children.

Evans worked with agencies that list missing children from across the nation. He called other detectives who handle similar cases, and he tried to trace any records Montgomery left when she took her children from Palm Beach County in August 1986.

"She knew we were after her and just how far behind we were," Evans said.

But Evans vowed never to reveal the single break in the case -- the clue that led to Montgomery's capture -- unless it must come out in trial.

Evans, who handles missing-children and child-abuse cases for the Sheriff's Office, said he sees about half a dozen cases each year in Palm Beach County in which parents take their children against a court order. Few of these cases ever result in criminal charges.

But authorities on the subject of missing children say parents in Florida often kidnap their children.

Les Davies, national executive director of the Adam Walsh Center, said parental abductions account for the second-largest category of the state's 4,000 missing children. Runaways are the largest group.

Davies said his group had responded to 367 cases of parental abductions nationwide since the beginning of the year. He declined to discuss how the organization worked on the Montgomery-Bray case.

Even if Bray had abused the children, the children are no better off on the run with their mother, Davies said.

"The children are at risk," he said. "A child where it is not supposed to be is a child at risk."

Evans gave another reason why parental abduction is wrong.

"That end does not justify the means," he said. "There's a right way and a wrong way to do everything. If the kids are being abused, you get it investigated, you present that to a judge. You get it settled."

That is easy to say, but not so easy to do, one of Montgomery's lawyers said.

"I can say that," said Lisa Ahonen, a Legal Aid attorney handling Montgomery's civil matters. "I don't have to go home to an abusive spouse. I don't have to go to visitation with an abusive parent."